LETTER: Supporting Barnes for Congress

Published October 25, 2012 at 12:17 am

To the Editor:

We were disappointed to read the ECM Editorial Board’s Oct. 18th endorsement of Erik Paulsen for Congress. Nothing was mentioned about his voting record, which lines up 93 percent with the Republican Party (even more to the right than Michele Bachmann). With a record like this, it’s surprising how often he refers to his bipartisanship in his communication with constituents.

We believe many of the issues he has voted AGAINST are popular with people in this district:

Equal pay for women,

Medicare as we know it,

911 health care for the first responders,

The Affordable Care Act (voted 33 times to repeal with no plan to replace it),

The Recovery Act (his photo op for 610 was declined because of his “no” vote)

We are familiar with the difficultly constituents have had requesting a meeting with Rep. Paulsen. Our experience was last year during a nationwide postal workers’ rally at Congressional representative offices. The organizer for our area personally went to Representative Paulsen’s office three times in advance to make sure he would be there to meet after the rally. We were surprised and disappointed to see him leave from the side door of his office building just 5 minutes before the rally was to start.

For these reasons, we believe that Brian Barnes will better represent the voters in CD 3.